'Make a stand for independent, creative film making in a world where the pressures of conformism and commercialism are becoming more powerful every day'
Lindsay Anderson.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Enemy.

This is probable one of the best example’s of a film made
more interesting by a discussion that followed its screening. The film in
question was Enemy (2013) showing as part of the Robert Burns Centre Film
Theatre Film Club Season. Introduced by our host for the evening Julie
McMorran, but as she admitted it was more of what was not said rather than what
was said because of giving to much away that she feared would spoil the
enjoyment, if that’s the right word to use! But she did inform us that the film
split both critics and its audience with its ‘non signposted’ narrative. She
went on to say that the films screenplay, written by Javier Gullon, was based
on the novel The Double by Jose Saramago,
which was first published, in Portuguese, in 2002. The French-Canadian Denis
Villeneuve directed the movie whose best known films to date have probably been
Incendies
(2010), where twin brother and sister go on a journey of discovery to unravel
the mystery of their mothers life, andPrisoners (2013) a thriller about
the search for two girls after they have been abducted. This last film also
stared Jake Gyllenhaal who in this latest movie plays both main parts. The film
club recently screened one of the actor’s best works in the form of Nightcrawler
(2014). His role of Lou Bloom gained him a well-deserved selection of Best
Actor nominations. Julie told us that this popular actor already had four more
films in the pipeline.

Adam and Mary.

Enemy is an extremely
confounding psychological drama about a sexually repressed college professor,
Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal), who quite by chance discovers that he has a doppelganger
in the form of an actor called Anthony Claire (Gyllenhaal again) who like
himself lives in Toronto. Although the two men are physically identical they
couldn’t be more different in personality! Other than to say this strange discovery
leads both men into some very dark places I will not say any more to avoid any
chance of a spoiler. The film also stars Melanie
Laurent as Adams girlfriend Mary, Sarah Gadon as Helen, the pregnant wife
of Anthony and Isabella Rossellini in a ‘blink and your miss her role’ as
mother.

Anthony and Helen.

When this film was premiered at the 2013 Toronto Film
Festival it mysterious ending left its audience in a stunned silence and I for
one am not surprised. Its obscure story is rather ponderous and I’m afraid did
not draw me in, it has been alleged that its source novel is just as difficult
to comprehend. Our discussion that followed the movie led to all sorts of
assumptions as to what the film was really about and who exactly Adam and
Anthony were. Were they two different people; are they really one person or
maybe identical twins separated at birth and is Rossellini the mother of
both?Perhaps when you go to see this
film, or if you have already have seen it, perhaps you could let me know your
theory and I’ll pass it on to the RBCFT Film Club?